Murky outlook for the general election

There is no question now that the outlook for the next general election — which a growing number of LDP officials are reportedly arguing should be held after dissolving the Diet in May — is muddier than before. The scandal in Ozawa Ichiro's political organization has overshadowed all else, including the re-passage this week of the budget-related expenditures bill for the second 2008 supplementary budget (and Koizumi Junichiro's absence from the vote).

After his press conference Wednesday, Ozawa has been silent, but everyone else is talking. Everyone that is, except Prime Minister Aso Taro, who refused to comment Thursday when asked about the DPJ response that the arrest was politically motivated. As expected, Aso has decided to stay above the fray, leaving the political point-scoring to his party. Aso reportedly told his chief cabinet secretary not to be gleeful about the arrest.

The battle lines are clear: the DPJ will do all it can to make this a story about the abuse of power and anti-democratic behavior by an organ of the state, while the LDP will do all it can to keep the focus on the charges, whether or not Okubo is found guilty. The chiefs of the LDP's factions spent Thursday defending the honor of the Tokyo district public prosecutor's office. Machimura Nobutaka, for example, stated that the past arrest of LDP power brokers bears witness to the office's "strict neutrality." (Although Jiji notes that Ibuki Bunmei dissented from his colleagues and stated that it is "shameful" to revel in the non-policy mistakes of a rival. How decent of him.)

Kawamura Takeo, the chief cabinet secretary, was equally scandalized by the DPJ's argument that the prosecutor's office was underhanded, proclaiming, "Japan is a mature constitutional state — it's impossible that the government would even think of such things as a politically motivated investigation." There is, of course, a logical fallacy in that statement. Most would see the United States as a "mature constitutional state" and yet this week it came out that the CIA destroyed 92 videotapes of interrogations that might have involved torture.

Meanwhile, the LDP cannot be too smug about Ozawa's troubles, as some LDP politicians, including cabinet members Ishiba Shigeru and Noda Seiko, have realized. The public hasn't forgotten about the LDP's own ties with the construction industry, and it's learning about ties between LDP politicians and Nishimatsu Construction in the wake of the Okubo arrest. Mori Yoshiro has indicated that his political support group will return 3 million Japanese yen in donations from a group connected to Nishimatsu. More significantly, Nikai Toshihiro, METI minister in the Aso cabinet, has announced that his faction will return 8.38 million yen, the amount that two Nishimatsu-connected political groups purchased in tickets to faction parties from 2004-2006 (although the groups through which the money was funneled no longer exist, raising the question of who will receive the money, if anyone). Mori and Nikai are presumably not alone among senior politicians who have received money from Nishimatsu. Has anyone taken a look at the accounts of Aso's koenkai?

Things may yet take a turn for the worse for Ozawa, as Jun Okumura argues here. But for the moment the situation appears to have stabilized. The government remains unpopular and mired in the need to respond to the economic crisis. The LDP would like to go on the offensive, but is constrained by its own shady ties and is thus left merely defending the prosecutor's office from DPJ accusations. The DPJ has suffered a public relations blow, but Ozawa still has enough of the party's leaders behind him to soldier on barring a conviction or new evidence coming to light that directly implicates Ozawa in the scandal. The DPJ probably still holds the upper hand in a general election, but this may cut into its margin of victory. And the press, led by Sankei, is doing the best it can to keep this story in the news. (For those interested, Sankei has published two more parts in its ongoing exposé on Ozawa's DPJ.) Shokun!, the conservative monthly that announced this week that it will be shutting down after its June issue, chipped in with a short piece discussing how Ozawa treats Japanese democracy with contempt by refusing to appear in the Diet.

What does seem clear is that this general election will be a peculiar election, in that it won't be a single election. Unlike in the past, the most heated competition between the LDP and the DPJ as parties will be in rural districts where Ozawa and the party leadership has devoted the bulk of their attention. Meanwhile, in urban districts LDP and DPJ candidates will both be running against their parties, distancing themselves from Aso and Ozawa respectively and emphasizing their reformist credentials. Yomiuri quotes Nagashima Akihisa as telling his koenkai that he wants to believe that Ozawa is innocent, but he is prepared to reverse his judgment if new facts come to light. I am guessing that Nagashima is not alone among the DPJ's urban candidates.

Thanks to Ozawa, the DPJ may not be able to take the support of urban voters for granted in the forthcoming election, which means that, interestingly, the biggest winners in the Ozawa scandal may be the LDP's reformist candidates who not too long ago were despondent about their electoral prospects. They still have to distance themselves from their party, but now their DPJ rivals will have to work equally hard to distance themselves from Ozawa.

The election may come down to which party's reformists can most distance themselves from their party's leader.

Meet the new Fukuda cabinet

I am in Los Angeles on a brief layover before heading to Chicago, so I don't have time to offer a more thorough discussion of the Fukuda reshuffle.

For something more than my cursory remarks, I strongly recommend Jun Okumura's take and MTC's two posts.

Readers will not be surprised to learn that I am underwhelmed by the Fukuda reshuffle. Aside from the deft moves of co-opting Aso Taro and Yosano Kaoru — hard to freelance and challenge the prime minister when having responsibilities to party and government — remarkably little will change as a result of this cabinet.

It is not a particularly flashy or telegenic bunch, at least no more than the previous cabinet. While Mr. Fukuda emphasized that this new cabinet will work on behalf of the people (I thought the previous cabinet was supposed to do that?), no major policy or even stylistic shifts will result from this cabinet. Mr. Machimura remains its spokesman, and Masuzoe Yoichi remains in place as the minister handling the most pressing issues facing the government. If Mr. Fukuda were prepared to have the tax debate that he previously said he wanted to have, Mr. Yosano's presence would be significant for policy reasons, but with livelihood and consumer issues at the top of the agenda, it is unlikely that Mr.Yosano will make much ground in his campaign for a consumption tax increase.

One difference might be in the conduct of foreign policy, if this government gets enough time to address foreign policy. Mainichi notes that in China policy, this cabinet might actually be Fukuda-colored, with China-friendly Nikai Toshihiro and Hayashi Yoshimasa taking over at METI and MOD respectively. Mr. Fukuda needs all the help he can get in making the case for a constructive relationship with China, but in practical terms their presence may be negligible.

Perhaps the biggest loser from the reshuffle is Nakagawa Hidenao, whose "rising tide" group was locked out; then again, as MTC suggests, Mr. Nakagawa and the Koizumians may well be the biggest winners of the night, considering that this cabinet may well end up presiding over a catastrophic general election defeat that will wreck the careers of all involved.

I will write more later, once I've digested this lineup and read some more commentary.

Post-summit election?

In recent days, the message from the LDP's leaders has been that the government is considering calling a general election later in 2008, following the G8 summit to be held in Hokkaido in July.

Nikai Toshihiro, chairman of the LDP's executive council, argued in a speech in Osaka on Saturday for a post-summit election, suggesting that a successful summit will put the government in a strong position from which to ask the people for a new mandate.

Prime Minister Fukuda, meanwhile, in a press conference on Friday dismissed the notion of an early election, insisting that his first priorities are getting the budget passed and successfully hosting the G8 (as well as the passage of a permanent law on JSDF dispatch). He also suggested that a cabinet reshuffle remains an option as a way to break the political deadlock, although it is unclear to me how a new cabinet lineup would make much difference. Is there a lineup that the prime minister could assemble that would (a) be free to corruption and a tendency for inappropriate remarks (such as Hatoyama Kunio's friend-of-a-friend Al Qaeda member remark, which the prime minister recently called "interesting") and (b) lead the public to rally to the government's side in its showdown with the DPJ?

There is no magic bullet for resolving the divided Diet. A general election certainly won't do it, seeing as how it would most likely deprive the government of its supermajority without giving the DPJ a majority, meaning that I still don't buy talk of a general election in 2008. Note that in his remarks, Mr. Fukuda was careful to note that it would depend on the political situation following the G8 summit. And then it will depend on the political situation following the 2008 extraordinary session of the Diet. And then, before you know it, it will be September 2009.

Mr. Fukuda and the LDP have little choice but to continue to do what they've been doing: pressuring the DPJ to cooperate but preparing to overrule the Upper House as necessary. Granted, the LDP might not want to use Mr. Mori as its hatchet man for attacking the DPJ, but the principle remains. Barring any major swings in public opinion, the current situation will likely hold for some time. The government may not make much progress on dealing with national issues, but we may be about to discover how long the Japanese people are willing to tolerate gridlock in the Diet.

Perilous weeks ahead

Prime Minister Fukuda, as I expected when he was chosen as prime minister in late September, has shown himself to be far more adept than most commentators expected. (And one hears fewer complaints about Mr. Fukuda's being a government of factions — I have no doubt that this is Mr. Fukuda's government.)

But while he has stabilized the LDP and made the best of the opportunities present in the political situation, the next two weeks will determine whether Mr. Fukuda's government is doomed to be short-lived or whether he will able to maneuver his government through perilous straits and survive until September 2009.

LDP officials continue to send mixed signals about the party's (and government's?) thinking about the timing of a general election. Nikai Toshihiro, the chairman of the party's executive council, suggested in a speech Saturday that a general election is "not far" and that the LDP should consider talks on a political realignment or a grand coalition in the aftermath of a general election. Nakasone Yasuhiro, grand old man of the LDP, suggested on Saturday that the LDP make the pursuit of a grand coalition with the DPJ a campaign promise in a general election campaign. Finally, in a sign of the LDP's need to regain the trust of rural Japan, Tanigaki Sadakazu, the PARC chairman, said in a speech in Fukui-ken, "I cannot say what amount of money, but the voice of farm households will be reflected and included in the 2007 supplementary budget." He received complaints about the government's failure to recognize the difficulties faced by farmers.

These remarks suggest that the LDP is thinking hard about calling a snap election sooner rather than later, contrary to recent remarks by Koga Makoto, the LDP's election strategy chairman and fourth senior executive. Or is it? Are these messages designed to keep the opposition off balance?

Meanwhile, should the persistent calls for a grand coalition be construed as a tacit admission of the hopelessness of the LDP's position in a general election? The LDP's election chiefs have made clear that it is giving up on the one-term Koizumi kids, writing them off as sure losers. Considering that Mr. Koizumi's followers are more competitive in more urban districts, does the LDP assume that it has no chance of besting the DPJ in urban Japan? How does the LDP plan to win if not by backing the 2005 incumbents associated with the still-popular Mr. Koizumi? Does the LDP really think that it will draw voters by promising to share power with the DPJ?

All of this could just be designed to keep the DPJ off balance, somehow tricking Mr. Ozawa into appearing unreasonable and undermining the DPJ's public support, but then again, it could be a sign that the LDP is improvising, that Mr. Fukuda doesn't have a plan for dealing with the six unanswered questions of the Diet session. As reported in a recent Mainichi article, the government will exercise prudence as to whether it will extend the Diet session a second time to ensure passage of the anti-terror law.

Prudence, or reading the air the moment of decision?

Reshuffle day — LDP leadership

NHK has just announced the new LDP leadership, and in general it looks to be a better team than that which served for the past year.

As expected, Aso Taro (Aso faction, 66) has been moved over to party headquarters to become LDP secretary-general; whether this will be a career cul-de-sac for Aso remains to be seen, but it does mean that the face of party has some popularity with the public, given that Aso is something of a henjin. (It also suggests that Abe will be sharing power — Sankei is already calling it the Abe-Aso system.)

The new general affairs chairman, meanwhile, will be outgoing Kokutai chairman Nikai Toshihiro (Nikai faction, 68). Given the state of unrest within the LDP, Nikai may also be an improvement, being a voice of reason and compromise in the midst of ideologues.

Most interesting is the appointment of Ishihara Nobuteru (no faction), son of Tokyo governor Shintaro, as Nakagawa Shoichi's successor as PARC chairman. Ishihara, who turned fifty earlier this year, held ministerial portfolios under Koizumi and is generally regarded as a future leader of the LDP. He is also a dedicated Koizumian, if the statement at his webpage on Japan in the twenty-first century is any indication.

Another Koizumi veteran, Oshima Tadamori (Tamura faction, 60), a MAFF minister under Koizumi, has been named the new Kokutai chairman. And Suga Yoshihide, who until recently was a candidate for a significant ministerial post, has been given the lowly post of election strategy chairman.

A step forward?

It seems that incumbent LDP Diet Strategy Committee Chairman Nikai Toshihiro is being considered as Shiozaki Yasuhisa's replacement as chief cabinet secretary. Nikai, a onetime member of the Takeshita faction (like Ozawa) who left the LDP to join former Prime Minister Hosokawa's Japan Renewal Party in 1993 and served as a vice-minister in Hosokawa's cabinet, is an experienced politician who might be able to manage the government's agenda with the Upper House in the hands of the opposition. (He was also tapped by Koizumi to head the committee responsible for postal privatization following the September 2005 postal reform election.)

The challenge facing the next chief cabinet secretary and the Abe cabinet as a whole is, of course, the drafting of compromise legislation that forces the DPJ to choose between playing a constructive policy role and opposing the government in a manner that will force the government to rule solely on the back of its super-majority and prompt public disapproval. Nikai, Mainichi suggests, has a "pipeline" to Ozawa from their time together in the ragtag coalition that governed from 1993-1994, which might be used to undercut the DPJ's position.

I remain convinced, of course, that Prime Minister Abe, lacking the confidence of people and party, is doomed sooner or later, but it's not difficult to imagine that the combination of a new prime minister and an adroit Diet manager like Nikai could revive the LDP's fortunes enough to take the wind out of Ozawa's sails and prompt doubts to return about the DPJ's viability.

But none of that will be possible without a new prime minister. Every step Mr. Abe takes seems to be the wrong one, the latest being this belated announcement — noted by MTC — of the postponement of the start of the autumn extraordinary Diet session to September 10th, giving the prime minister time to travel to the APEC summit in Australia (to say his farewells?) and apparently to give new cabinet members time to prepare.

As Casey Stengel might say if he were still alive and, er, observing Japanese politics, "Can't anybody here play this game?"